#27. Veerana

I can barely put thoughts down about horror movies at this point. The anxiety I’m feeling about the realtime horrors of electing He-Who-Shalt-Not-Be-Named has crippled my ability to function as even a remedial bl-gger. I hoped getting back up on the 31 Days of Horror horse (6 more to go!) would place some psychological distance between me and this horrific political cycle. Yet here I am… and a sexytime Bollywood vampire movie can’t even get me in the mood.

And if a Bollywood vampire/musical/sex kitten/mystical warlock movie can’t get you in the mood, what will? WHAT WILL?? Full blown, 31 Days of Horror impotence.

Still, let’s give it a shot.

Okay… so a witch cult hangs out in the forest worshipping some horned deity thing. There’s also a lusty man-sucking vampire temptress. And then a local mayor sends an agent of change to take care of said man-sucking vampire temptress. Well, when that works, the witch cult leader gets bent out of shape and vows revenge. Which seems pretty okay until some dude drives the mayor’s daughter right through the same woods where the witch cult hangs out. Surprise! The witch cult guy snags the daughter and transfers the soul of the old man-sucking vampire temptress into the daughter’s body because he’s clearly seen The Exorcist. And that’s roughly the first 30 minutes of a 150-minute movie.

Your ability to comprehend Veerana relies on your familiarity with Bollywood movies overall. I could tell you that Veerana is a movie about a sex-kitten vampire with intermittent musical numbers, but would you fully understand the consequences?

It is true, of course, that Indian movies have had far more people chasing each other around the trees than kissing, and that is primarily because of the dictates of the dreaded censor board, the cheerless cinematic embodiment of the Nehruvian ideal of big government intruding into every aspect of national life, which made directors move the camera away at strategic moments to two flowers touching each other.

The Times ran this article in 2013. Veerana opened in 1988. Keep this in mind when merging the above information with the narrative synopsis for Veerana on IMDB: “A beautiful young girl, unfortunately possessed from her childhood by a vengeful spirit, wanders around lonely places to seduce and kill people and thus, gradually becoming lost into a dark world of revenge and lust.”

Yet, all that said, Veerana is all about sex. Coy flirting; questionable notions of male machismo; fawning, fainting females; and the far more overt vampirism (which is itself an inherently sexualized activity). Censorship in 1988 manifests in juvenile courting sequences with choreographed song and dance featuring (the abovementioned “strategic” camera movement) before contact… and meticulously placed sideboob and come-hither eyes.

The witchcraft and black magic elements lifted from Indian mythology offer plenty of opportunity for horrific latex masks and practical effects. Looming idols and ghastly temples. The low-budget nature of the film adds rather than detracts from our enjoyment. The remedial camerawork offers plenty of opportunity for a giggle. Within the opening minutes you’ll note awkward tracking shots and inept framing. If you can abide the ways inept filmmaking creeps into Veerana, you’ll likely take immense pleasure in this oddity — an oddity at least to our Western concepts of horror cinema.

Most jarring is the waffling between sunshiney happy time Bollywood song and dance and the more horrific elements. Two films have been mashed together to satisfy our need for all varieties of entertainment. Veerana is an automat filled with simple cinematic pleasures. Slapstick. Foppery. Sexy times. Minimally gory bits. Incompetent storytelling. Writhing, barely-clad sex-kitten vampirism. Meta-movie within a movie commentary.

Final Thoughts:

Surprings amounts of skin and overt innuendo populate Veerana despite the obvious censor demands. Though, in my Bollywood experience, innuendo has never been a problem. Playful physical contact, however, becomes more problematic when your movie requires vampirism. Have a strong cocktail and enjoy this ridiculous vaudevillian trip to the sub-continent.

#26. Salem’s Lot

Fun fact: I didn’t know Salem’s Lot was a mini-series when I purchased it. I didn’t know it when I popped it into the Blu-ray player. I didn’t recognize it was a mini-series when I eclipsed the 60-minute mark and not much had happened. At around 80 minutes, I grabbed the Blu-ray case and stared into its plastic soul.

ME: WHAT THE $%#$ ARE YOU?

SALEM’S LOT: I’m Salem’s Lot.

ME: THANKS. WHEN DOES SOMETHING, YOU KNOW, HORRIFIC HAPPEN?

SALEM’S LOT: When do you want something horrific to happen?

ME: NOW.

SALEM’S LOT: Patience.

ME: Okay.

…

WAIT. HOW MUCH LONGER CAN I POSSIBLY REQUIRE PATIENCE?!? IS THIS THE HORROR EQUIVALENT OF ‘ANDY WARHOL’S EMPIRE’??? I HAVE SOMEWHERE TO BE IN TWENTY MINUTES.

SALEM’S LOT: You’ll have to cancel your plans.

ME: I CAN’T CANCEL PICKING UP MY DAUGHTER FROM PRE-SCHOOL.

SALEM’S LOT: Have you checked your priorities lately?

ME: HOW LONG ARE YOU ANYWAY?

SALEM’S LOT: I’m exactly 184 minutes.

ME: THE HELL YOU ARE!

[checks back of case]

The hell you are.

SALEM’S LOT: Have I ever done you wrong?

ME: You told me to leave my 4yo daughter at pre-school.

SALEM’S LOT: True. I did do that. My bad.

ME: [mashes stop button] I’LL SEE YOU LATER.

SALEM’S LOT: I know you will.

Final Thought:

Once I finally came around to the mini-series pace, Salem’s Lot revealed the simple pleasures of a slow-burn horror story and rewarded with a truly memorable vampirian villain. I couldn’t help but compare Salem’s Lot to my recent experience with Stranger Things. Beyond the superficial connection of being a mini-series, I found myself researching contemporary 1979 response, seeking an idea about how the film was accepted upon release, how it was consumed. I found little first-hand information. If you were old enough to have watched Salem’s Lot firsthand, comment about your experience. Was this a must-see event? Was there hype and expectation? I was only 2 at the time, so I don’t have anything to add to the conversation.

#25. Tenebrae

After first watching Suspiria, I dove into the Dario Argento filmography. Every Argento movie I could rent ended up in my VCR that wild and crazy summer of 1995. The downside to binge viewing movies or TV shows (or any variety of media for that matter) is that the condensed experience resists thoughtful meditation. As a result, these films or episodes wash over us like a tidal wave and good luck hanging onto any details of that experience other than the ferocious slap across your entire body.

So it went with my Argento binge. After Suspiria and Opera, I recall very little. The likes of Tenebrae, Phenomena, and other lesser Argentos disappeared into the celluloid ether. Fleeting images, nothing more. With regards to Tenebrae, the Argento of the hour, I remembered the red heeled face stomp.

My favorite Dario Argento flicks boast the grand visuals of Suspiria, Opera and Deep Red. Movies that blur the lines between film and moving artwork. The notion may seem odd — a horror movie imposing upon the classical arts — but the horrific nature of the image lends itself to similar contemplation required by more abstract modern art. Though a different constitution might be required to engage a film like Tenebrae versus, perhaps, Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles (just to name one particular painting with which I’m familiar), Dario Argento paints his canvas with poetic murder in addition to the occasional splatter.

Blue Poles – Jackson Pollock

Abstract imagery, red herrings, misdirection, interpretation beyond the images presented. Jackson Pollock is no more just a mere “paint spatterer” than Argento is just a gore spatterer. Argento’s greatest films appeal as both exploitation but also as visual poetry.

The same could be said for many styles of narrative filmmaking, of course, but there seems to be a kind of synchronicity between the ways abstract painters go about their art and the ways in which horror film directors hope to transcend exploitation while still employing murder, gore, and nudity.

With that direction in mind, let’s turn our attentions to Tenebrae, a film that calls attention to its genre and its genre critics — as many latter gialli tend to do. As the cycle wore on, giallo films innovated with self-awareness. I talked a bit about the genre’s limited palette in my Deep Red conversation. By the early 1980’s, giallo had become a conflicted, quirky pre-teen with growing pains, and if you take a look at any of the modern descendants, you’ll note a constant tether to the past. The best modern example would probably be Cattet and Forzani’s Amer (2009) which embraces the genre’s clichéd imagery through a lens of constant auteurist abstraction.

Within the first minutes of Tenebrae, Argento responds directly to critics of his specialized brand of cinema. Peter Neal, the author of Tenebrae, a murder-mystery novel that may be inspiring a real-life killer, addresses a reporter suggesting his books are inherently anti-woman. Neal, played by Anthony Franciosa, says his novels can’t be anti-woman because he himself is not anti-woman.

In Tenebrae, however, Argento also repackages his own personal experience with an obsessed fan who repeatedly called the director with death threats. The caller suggested that Argento’s prior works had done irreversible psychological damage. Argento has engaged in conversations with the viewer before, but Tenebrae feels more personal — even without knowing the extratextual information. I’ll postpone a more detailed conversation about this particular point until after you’ve seen the film because spoilers.

That’s not to say that Tenebrae necessarily benefits as a result. A couple of the murders/gore setpieces stand out, but the film lacks the intention of a more purposeful giallo like Deep Red or even The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The head pushed back through the glass window. The aforementioned heel stomp. Flailing appendage amputees. Unlike many of his earlier films, Argento treads less delicately with gore and relies less on viewer imagination and anticipation. It’s almost as if this particular film was meant to serve many masters other than Argento’s creative muse.

Filled with double meanings and dark identities, similar to the Seinfeldian concept of the Bizarro Jerry, Tenebrae‘s meta nature leaves us observing, waxing philosophic and contemplating Argento’s inspiration for this and that, much as we would those Pollocks that continue to beguile and titillate art connoisseurs and casual critics. The truth of the film, though elusive, can be found in the flashbacks. In Tenebrae, Argento constantly turns to the past for answers to the greatest riddles. And Argento doesn’t even want you to piece it all together after just one viewing. Tenebrae is a movie best absorbed first, studied later.

Final Thought: I might not agree that this is one of Argento’s finest, but it’s certainly a film that inspires continued analysis and digestion. Tenebrae becomes an effective collection of individual setpieces and curious narrative twists. It is also one of Argento’s most purposefully perverse.

#24. A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

Clearly my complaints about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 have been heard. Action has been taken. Dream Warriors forces Freddy back into the proper dreamscapes. A certain logic about the fear of sleep / the little death of nighttime slumber! Huzzah! I’m an influential bl-gger!

Wes Craven returns as a writer after being absent for Freddy’s Revenge, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 does indeed correct the most egregious wrongs about Part 2. I’m not saying the two are connected, but the two are connected. Freddy’s playful menace comes back (viagra?) along with some legitimate, earned tension. Robert England appears to have fun here and abstains from knocking over any China cabinets or setting parakeets on fire.

Tormented girl from the original Nightmare Heather Langenkamp returns as some variety of psychoanalyst to help an institution full of “insane” kids who all happen to be having Freddy Kreuger-brand nightmares. Heather and the gang assemble an army of “dream warriors” to unite their dreams and go after Freddy together. They form like Sandman Voltron. A killer high-concept premise with terrific practical effects spoiled by a few minor issues.

Even Zsa Zsa Gabor gets it.

Okay. Maybe not sooooo minor… but it’s not a flaming hot dog. Chuck Russell (The Blob, The Mask) made his directorial debut here with A Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and it’s quite clear he couldn’t help an actor find the craft services table, let alone their motivation. Heather Langenkamp, who proved capable of carrying a film in A Nightmare on Elm Street, delivers line readings that wouldn’t seem out of place in a low-budget pornographic film.

So maybe Heather and Chuck didn’t gel. Whatever. It happens. Except it also happened with everyone else in the film, including Patricia Arquette, John Saxon, and on down the line until you’ve got wheelchair-bound Will screaming at Freddy Kreuger about being a “Wizard Master.” Only Laurence Fishburne survives because Laurence Fishburn doesn’t give a damn about your direction, Chuck; he’s going to read lines like Laurence goddamn Fishburne.

I needed more stop-motion skeleton.

So the acting gets dodgy and distracting, and John Saxon goes non-sequitur tinkerbell, but overall A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors delivers what we want out of a fun and freaky–ish Nightmare movie.

Freddy holds court. Slick special effects, including a stop-motion Freddy skeleton that could have made Harryhausen nod in silent appreciation. Don’t underestimate the importance of consistent dream logic and reasonable guidelines for Freddy’s ability to reach into the real world.

Final Thought: Entertaining but hugely flawed is marked improvement over dumb and dumber.

#23. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

After rewatching A Nightmare on Elm Street, I forged onward into the depths of the A Nightmare on Elm Street box set. Logically, I tossed the second disc into the player and let that sucker roll through both Freddy’s Revenge and Dream Warriors. As a result I’m piggybacking these two reviews, churning them out one right after another, because I watched them in one sitting and it’s also November 7th and nobody gives a flipping garbage dump about bad horror sequels outside the proper #31DaysOfHorror. I can’t blame them; I’m only continuing on with this misguided quest because I watched 34 horror movies in a little over 31 days and goddammit I’m going to see this to the end.

I can’t tell you how dispiriting it is looking up at Freddy’s Revenge as #23 and knowing I have 11 more of these to write. I had plans for November, you know. Not great plans, but they were plans nonetheless.

I will now summarize my thoughts about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge with a few tweets sent out in the heat of the moment.

Ahem.

Finishing up my #31DaysOfHorror/#Hooptober viewing requirements with NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2. This movie is all kinds of dumb.

At one critical point during a climactic chase scene between Freddy and our heroine in peril du jour, Freddy pauses, glares at his prey and promptly, viciously rakes his claw across a row of tchotchkes on a shelf. WHAT DID THOSE POOR TCHOTCHKES EVER DO TO YOU, FREDDY KREUGER? Someone spent many many dozens of dollars mail ordering ceramic figurines by mail and you just think you have the right to smash it all to pieces?

But it’s not that Freddy smashes the tchotchkes, it’s that he does not continue the pursuit for at least three beats. He remains in place, staring at the girl and basking in the glow of his wanton destruction.

Calling these things “red herrings” lends them too much credit. The term suggests that the unrelated event is meant to distract our attention from a proper conclusions. On the contrary, Freddy’s beer-bursting, tchotchke mashing, hot-dog flaming ways direct us without fallacy to the proper conclusion — that A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is an insipid, toothless, misdirected waste of a movie. It’s not scary. It’s not funny (unintentional bits notwithstanding). And it certainly doesn’t play fair with the dream/real world parameters set forth in the original.

Dreams give Freddy power. Never sleep again. The necessity for sleep, the inevitability of dreaming created tension naturally. When A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 allows Freddy to possess the body of a teenager in order to crossover into the real world, it renders the fear and possibility of the limitless possibility of the dreamscape irrelevant.

What ho?! There are A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 apologists? Indeed. I hear your pleas for understanding. I also hear your argument that Freddy’s Revenge is a parable for coming out in the 1980’s. Cool. I can dig it. There’s plenty of foundation for a rather interesting analysis of the movie from that perspective. I look forward to reading it! But I’m certainly not writing it. I’ll be buggered if I have to sit through that stinkburger again anytime soon.